


Predators

by elisende



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Druids, F/M, Older Woman/Younger Man, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisende/pseuds/elisende
Summary: Long before becoming the first druid of the Emerald Grove, Halsin is a hotheaded, aimless youth struggling to master his anger.  When a mysterious druid saves him from a great bear, he sees a path to a different life.
Relationships: Halsin (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

Even the High Forest was a lonely place for a wood elf with no kinfolk to speak of--none still living. Most of his kind had left for Evermeet or for the teeming cities of the east. Neither appealed to Halsin. 

He roamed the great forest that was his birthright, scavenging what scraps could be found on the edges of the human settlements that encroached, year by year, like some choking vine.

And he grew from adolescent to adult over the twenty winters of his wandering, broadening across the shoulders, shooting up to a height that others seemed to find incredible. The humans around the villages he haunted took to calling him the _Tailhleach_ , “the tall walker,” in their strange tongue. They feared him as some sort of half-man, half-beast, a spirit protector of the forest. The myth was a useful one: it meant he went mostly undisturbed, except when the occasional foolhardy youth took it upon himself to hunt down the beast. But Halsin had his own ways of staying the sword arms and bows of overeager hunters. 

These conquests, too, became part of his legend. 

Now fully grown, he had become, in a word, complacent. There was nothing in the forest, man or beast, that could challenge him. So he thought, with all the arrogance of the young.

Halsin’s appetites often led him from one part of the forest to the other in search of delicacies: truffles, chestnut honey, blackberries. Today he was foraging for mushrooms: the orange rilled ones so good they could be eaten raw, as soon as they were dusted off. The mushrooms preferred this part of the wood, the wet brambly hillside that was often choked in fog. 

Nothing seemed amiss as he scanned the forest floor for their distinctive convex caps. 

He was deaf to the crackling of dead leaves, the faint but audible snap of a twig, the rustle of disturbed undergrowth and even the snort of the curious bear as it approached his crouching back. 

It was only when the beast’s breath disturbed the hair on Halsin’s head that he whirled around, startling the great bear. For one moment that felt like a century, they stared, nose to nose and eye to eye: elf and bear, locked in the fatal glance of prey and hunter.

Then the bear roared, its fear exploding to rage like dry tinder under lightning’s forked tongue. Halsin was so close that he could see the ridges on the bear’s bright canine teeth, taste its meaty breath. A young bear, he thought stupidly. He began backing away, all the while watching the beast.

The great bear stood on its hind feet and flattened its ears. It made as though to charge but it was only a feint, a test of Halsin’s resolve. He stopped. Anger building alongside his terror, he bellowed at it, swung the slim oaken branch he always carried with him. 

But the bear wouldn’t be intimidated. It had no inkling of his fearsome reputation. His rage was only fuel for its own. 

It swiped, claws scraping Halsin’s flesh from his hairline down to his left eyebrow. His vision went red and by instinct he swung his club. He only hit the bear by luck, the same luck that had saved his left eye.

It backed away and lowered its head, ears flattened. This would be a true charge and he stood little chance of surviving it, given the bear’s size. 

He stood, waiting, in a defensive crouch, holding out his makeshift club, blood pouring down his face. But just as the bear started to charge, a warning growl sounded from the chestnut grove beyond. 

Almost comically, the bear quirked its head. The growls continued and the bear moaned in reply, as though in conversation with it. 

The rage melted from the beast’s eyes and it pawed the air as an elven woman appeared in the gloom. She lowed at the bear once more and the bear, incredibly, seemed almost to chuckle.

“What are you--”

“He says you’re after his mushrooms again. Whenever you come here, you leave nothing for the others who reside in this wood. He thinks it's rather rude,” the elf said. As she came closer, he saw the crest of Silvanus on her broach. A druid, then.

He laughed incredulously, wiping the blood from his face. “ _I’m_ rude? That bear--”

“His name is Sage.”

Halsin paused, collecting his thoughts. The druid was very lovely, as a moonrise over a pine forest is lovely, or a bird of prey on the wing, or the river’s rush after first thaw. Hers was a stark, unadorned beauty. “That bear-- alright, _Sage_ \--was about to kill me,” he finally said, failing to keep his voice level. He was still trembling with his fear and anger. The two never could be parted, for him; they were like smoke and flame. 

“His kind have been killed for far less,” she said. Her tone was neutral but he could see a warning glint in her amber eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked, his curiosity overtaking his consternation. “There is no Circle for twenty leagues.”

“No indeed,” the druid said. He could tell she did not enjoy speaking of herself; her words took a rote quality. “I’m posted here for a task that has taken me some years, and will take more still to complete.” She tilted her head, looking inquiringly at him. “Like Sage, I’ve also noticed that you claim more than your share from this wood.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

“You are hard to avoid. You trample through the wood like it's your bedchamber.” 

He colored ever so slightly when she said the word bedchamber. The bear, Sage, groaned as if in agreement. The druid walked over and patted him on the head, whispering something in his rounded ears. Halsin felt absurdly jealous at the intimacy, even as his wounds began to throb.

As was often the case, he found himself speaking before he knew precisely what he was going to say. He knew only that he was drawn to the druid. “I can help you with your task, whatever it is, if you teach me in exchange. I would like to learn the ways of the druids.”

She didn’t laugh outright, at least. The druid seemed even to consider it. But then, finally, she said: “No, I haven’t the inclination for such an arrangement. I live alone by choice as much as by necessity.”

And without so much as a fare thee well, she vanished back into the wood. Sparing a quick backwards glance at the now mellow bear sniffing the orange mushrooms, Halsin followed.

*

He trekked for more than half the day until evening fell. The druid doubled back three times and almost lost him half a dozen more but every time he’d managed to find her trail and catch up with her. 

Perhaps, he reflected later, she wanted to be found.

He was not so foolhardy as to barge into the tiny hut where the druid lived; he had little doubt the elf could magick him into a fine paste and butter her toast with him, if she so desired. He rested on a fallen log on the patch of green and looked around the darkening glade as he waited for her to emerge. 

It was virtually untouched, despite her habitation. In contrast to the human villagers who seemed intent on clearing every tree within the radius of their settlements, the druid’s hut seemed to have emerged spontaneously from the ground, disturbing none of the surrounding environs. 

A brook murmured nearby and made sweet music with the evening song of the crepuscular birds. His mind wandered back to the druid and he resumed the game he’d been playing all afternoon as he trailed her, trying to guess her name. She looked to be a high elf of some maturity--perhaps five or even six centuries, old enough for the first lines to appear at the corners of her lovely, fierce eyes. What was she doing here, after all? 

It had been long since he’d met such an interesting person--since he’d met anyone he cared to know. The irony that she didn’t wish to know him was bitter, stinging. He dabbed gingerly at the gashes on his brow. They throbbed still but had stopped bleeding, at least.

Smoke rose from her hut and Halsin’s belly cramped with hunger. He had not eaten all day and was out of the deer jerky he usually kept in his hip pouch. And, too, there was hunger of another sort, equally desperate for satisfaction.

Her door finally opened to him, a rectangle of golden light in the gathering dark. 

He felt every inch of his six and a half feet when he entered the hut; he was eye level with the rafters and had to crouch to move around the single room. Without comment, the druid pulled a chair from the table--there was only one chair--and extended her arm in invitation. 

Halsin sat, inhaling the exquisite scent of the rabbit stew bubbling on the hearth. She did not offer to bind his wounds but bent over him to take a cursory look to ensure there was nothing amiss. 

He held his breath as she touched his face with her cool fingers, probing the furrows the Sage’s claws had left in his flesh. He gasped, and not just from the pain. How long had it been since he’d felt a woman’s touch, even an indifferent one? “Those will scar,” she said simply, then moved back to the hearth.

“Tell me,” he said, watching intently as she ladled the stew into an earthenware bowl. “What is your name?”

The druid glanced up from the hearth. Her amber gaze was intense; he felt his blood heating just from that look. He wanted her so badly that even the distant possibility his desire might be fulfilled quickened his pulse.

“Dalia,” she said. He could never have guessed it. 

“‘ _The edge of dawn_ ,’” he translated from the high elven. A poetic name but one that seemed to suit her. “Pretty. I’m called Halsin.”

She smiled at that. It was not a common name, he imagined, among her folk. 

“‘ _Hazelnut_ ,’” she said, meeting his eyes again as she passed him the bowl. Their fingers brushed and his intake of breath was audible. 

“Just ‘ _hazel_ ,’ in our tongue,” he said, still watching her. She was as captivating as a hawk at prey, even serving soup from a cookpot. He noticed a fading tattoo running along her hairline. Too ornate for druid work. He longed to trace it with his finger. “Where are your people?”

“My Circle resides at the Dancing Falls, on the edge of the Dessarin.” She settled on the hearth to eat her soup. She had a slim figure, neat and athletic and not tall, imposing though she was in presence.

His curiosity warred with his hunger and since he had already been marked as rude, he split the difference and spoke over a mouthful of the glorious stew: rich and silky, it was, tasting of herbs and wild onions and savory meat. It burned his mouth but he did not care. “I meant, your _people_. Your kith and kin.”

“The druids are my kin now. The creatures and trees of this wood my kith.” She blew carefully on her stew before taking a bite.

Halsin considered this and found the idea not unappealing. The last two decades had been lonely ones and he found himself now relishing even the most adversarial contacts with people. “What do you druids do? Besides live in nature?”

Dalia snorted. “‘Besides live in nature,’ as though it’s some rare sport.”

“Well, isn’t it? Not many choose such a life.” 

“You did.”

He stopped eating and looked down at his bowl of half-finished stew, uncertain of how much to reveal. He wanted to tell all, unburden all the secrets of his heart for the sake of sharing them. But even his corroded social skills warned him against that approach. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel sorry for him. “This life chose me,” he said vehemently, anger rising unbidden. “Not the other way around. My people are dead and gone.”

Dalia’s curved eyebrow registered her skepticism and he felt another flash of annoyance. How dare she imagine she knew his heart better than he?

“You might have traveled to a city, or made a life in one of the villages here. No doubt they would be happy to have your shield and many maidens happy to take you to their beds.”

Halsin choked on his stew and from the corner of his eye caught her faint smile, the glimmer in her keen eyes. She was teasing him for the callow youth that he knew he was, damn her. 

When he regained some dignity after his fit of coughing subsided, he said, “You presume, druid. I’m not interested in maidens.” She did not squirm under his stare but merely returned his challenging gaze with her own. He wanted desperately to know what was going on behind those golden eyes. Almost as much as he wanted to throw her onto the straw pallet in the corner and divest her of her robes, to explore her lean body with eyes, hands, and tongue.

“Teach me,” he demanded. He leaned forward in the creaky chair, using his imposing size to loom over her. She did not look the least bit intimidated.

“You are impetuous and full of anger. And truly, no better than the humans you scorn; for though you live in nature you do not cherish its harmony, only what you can plunder from it."

He opened his mouth to respond in fury--what he would say, he did not know, but certainly something regrettable--but the druid held up her hand, cutting him off with the force of that gesture.

"If you want to become a druid, you will first need to master your own feelings. But nature, much as we druids endeavor to heal it, also has the power to heal us in turn.” She heaved a sigh, as though already regretting her next words. “I can teach you. Perhaps it was meant to be so.”

Halsin’s anger melted into relief so deep the corners of his eyes pricked with tears. His voice was rough when he replied with a terse “Thank you.” Even he had not realized how much he wanted this--needed it. Halsin’s eyes finally rose again to meet Dalia’s. “I swear that your trust in me will not be misplaced.”

She nodded briskly as though they’d concluded a trade. “Well and good. About the other thing….”

“The other thing?” he said densely. 

“Of maidens and bedchambers.” She rolled her eyes and he felt a blush creep up his neck. 

“Oh. Yes. What about them?” he asked warily.

“I’m not so foolish as to offer my heart to a wood elf but we both have… needs.” Her face was still composed but behind her stiff words he could sense her vulnerability. She, too, was lonely. The idea of her dwelling here alone in the hut for years on end filled him with tenderness in equal measure to his desire for her.

His chair scraped away from the table and he narrowly avoided a collision with the rafter as he sat down beside her to take her face in his hands. 

The high elf had an angular jaw to match her aquiline features. Her eyes had little softness in them, even now. She told him what to do next. As their bodies joined by the fire he experienced pleasures he didn’t know existed. Compared to his crude, perfunctory couplings in the wood, they were divine, revelations written in flesh and sighs. 

After, they lay together in silence as the fire dwindled and his heart threatened to over-brim with happiness. Rare happiness from the promise of things to come.


	2. Chapter 2

Halsin knew so little it often shocked her. 

She recognized, when she took him on, that he was unfledged. But his ignorance was vast and hungry. 

Gods knew the boy had appetites. For knowledge, for every last scrap of food. For her body. She was not flattered: she knew she could be just about anyone, man or woman, elf or human--even a dwarf, he was indiscriminate. 

Most of all, he was hungry for connection. She did not ask what had become of his people but trusted he would tell her in his own time.

He was not shy of speaking. Nor of asking, endlessly, about all subjects. _What is the name of that bird, why is it called so, does it remain in the forest through winter or seek warmer climes? Why?_

In desperation, she wrote to her Circle and a month later a moose trotted into the clearing laden with bulging packs of scrolls and a few codexes. 

Provender for your mind, she explained. Halsin was dubious at first but his natural curiosity got the better of him and now he spent most afternoons curled up in the branches of a downy birch reading scroll after scroll, as insatiable a reader as he was a lover.

He wanted her every night, every dawn. He wanted her when she bent over the cookpot preparing their lunch and when they walked the woods. She refused him four times out of five and still they lay together twice a day. Dalia was exhausted but not displeased; he was an apt student in all things and by nature generous.

Her pupil’s progress in the six months under her tutelage was impressive even by her high standards. And true to his word, he’d given her no cause to regret her decision to teach him.

Yet he was still unformed. Still unconscious to the grace and nuance of nature’s dance. And still angry.

“Teach me how to take a wild shape,” he demanded one sun-washed afternoon in the clearing. Dalia, never idle, was picking through some useful herbs they had collected that morning in the woods, sorting them according to which she would dry, which she would distill, and which she would pack into oil. 

“You are not ready,” she said, not looking up from the herbs in her lap. “You have the ability”--and he did have magic, wild magic, in him--“but without the proper discipline you could be overcome by the animal’s mind. More than a few novices lose themselves entirely in the transformation.”

He scoffed. “You still underestimate me. You’re not my mother or my nursemaid, so stop trying to protect me.”

She glanced up at him. He sat rigidly against an oak’s trunk, beetle-browed, ready for a fight. Hungry for one. Any number of retorts leapt to her mind but she allowed herself only a neutral _hmm_ before going back to her herbs, bearing the quiet fury of his stare without further comment. The silence, when he stalked off into the wood, was sour with unspent anger.

He returned at nightfall with a roe buck slung over his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Halsin said, and though his words were plain, she could see his self-recrimination in the taut line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. He’d simply turned his anger inward on himself. It was pitiful to see, like a falcon hanging from its jesses.

She nodded. “Your anger will be your downfall one day, left uncontrolled. But I accept your apology, any road.” 

They made a stew with rosemary and juniper berries and a bit of wine that had lain unopened for decades at the bottom of Dalia’s trunk and miraculously had aged into a lovely vintage. 

“Where is it from?” Halsin asked, looking wondrously at the dusty bottle. “I’ve never tasted such wine.”

And it was special, among the finest she’d had in her six centuries. Smooth and sculpted, full on the tongue, bursting with ripe black fruit. She hesitated before saying, “It’s an Evermeet vintage.”

He looked up at her, curious, but Silvanus be praised, he didn’t ask the question he’d asked so many times before. 

Dalia gratefully changed the subject. “Hakka did whelp this year, after all.” She took another sip to savor the exquisite wine, then continued. “Four pups. She’s hidden them up on the ridge, in the little bluebell hollow.”

His eyes lit as they always did when discussing the forest’s wolves. He liked big predators, the great bear Sage notwithstanding--he still held a grudge for the scars that scored his brow. “That’s wonderful. Are they Thorn’s pups? She’s hiding them from Hatha?”

The wolves’ amorous entanglements were even more complicated than that of a wood elven village. Hakka and Hatha were sisters and bitter rivals for the affections of Thorn, one of the leading males in the pack. He was a young, brash hunter, uncommonly large. Dalia couldn’t help but see the resemblance and noted Halsin’s affection for the wolf with some amusement. 

“Mm,” she agreed. Her head was already a little light from the alcohol. With wine this good, it was easy to overdo it. She set her cup on the table and turned back to the stew, scraping the bottom of the pot. “You’ve been most helpful with my work in this wood.” She smiled to see him glow with silent pride at her rare praise. But it was not empty: despite his ignorance, he was observant when he wished to be and had discovered much that she had missed. 

“Your work won’t ever be finished, will it?” he asked softly. The firelight flickered in his eyes and with his wide, sensuous mouth ever so slightly open, she felt a heady wave that had little to do with the wine.

“No,” she admitted. “It won’t be. It’s an indefinite posting.” And one of her choosing, though she didn’t say so. She knew he could sense it. 

“Why?” he asked, yet again. Always _why_. She sighed in frustration.

“For once, do not concern yourself with why,” she said, more sharply than she intended. She softened her tone with a gentle look, a touch of her hand. He didn’t push further.

They ate, finished the bottle between them, and lay together in the quiet of the glade through a gauzy haze of alcohol, beneath the spreading branches of a grandfather oak and the dim light of the stars. As Dalia slipped into her trance of sleep, she warned herself that such things couldn’t--wouldn’t--last. And ruthlessly quashed the feeling of sadness that followed. 

*

Halsin rose early and once he was gone, Dalia lay on the grass with her eyes open, feeling a rare malaise. The birds sang as sweetly ever, but somehow there was less music in their voices. 

Later, she would look back and wonder if it was an omen.

She was bathing in the stream when a bellow echoed across the glade. It came from the heights of the ridge above, distant but unmistakable. Halsin’s booming voice, roughened with rage.

Without thought, she pulled her robe on and grabbed the ax from the wood chopping block outside the hut. Its grip was comforting in her hand as she sprinted barefoot into the brush and up the side of the long, wooded hill. 

She slipped through the brambles, eschewing the winding deer path to cut straight through the forest to the sound of her lover’s cry. 

Other voices joined in. Human voices. More screams and the sounds of battle chilled Dalia’s blood. A wolf bayed. Fear made her fly the last hundred yards, heedless of the tearing thorns or lashes of tree branches. She emerged into the wolf’s territory brandishing the ax above her head, ready for any foe, human or beast.

But the fight was already finished. Two hunters lay dead on earth soaked red with gore, eviscerated, and beside them, panting, were Halsin and Thorn, his lupine counterpart. Both with death in their eyes and blood on their faces. It dripped from Thorn’s muzzle and Halsin’s strong hands.

“What have you done?” she cried. Halsin’s wide eyes met her gaze; he was still in the grip of his blood frenzy.

Then she saw the den: the wolf Hakka and all of her pups, throats slit. For their fur, perhaps; or maybe simply for sport. Humans needed no greater justification to kill a wild thing. Bereft of life, the pups looked thin and insubstantial, little more than furry rags. Hakka’s sightless eyes rested on them even in death, the young she’d given her life protecting.

She whispered a quick prayer to Silvanus, to absorb their bodies back into the earth to seed new lives in this forest. But even as she spoke them, the words rang hollow.

“They were laughing, when I came upon them,” Halsin said. His voice was thick with hatred as he stared down at the two humans. These, too, Dalia commended to the Oakfather, though silently.

“You have done a truly stupid thing,” she said, not even trying to mollify her tone. She felt a fury rising in her to match the boy’s. Beside them, Thorn growled; she stilled him with an outstretched hand and he whimpered, sniffed the corpses of his mate and pups. 

“Two fewer miserable poachers in the wood? Silvanus himself would praise me. I’ve eliminated a threat to nature.” And infuriatingly, the wood elf truly looked pleased with himself.

“And what happens now?” she asked, her voice dangerously low. 

“Now the wood is peaceful once more.” A blackbird cautiously resumed its song in a nearby tree and Halsin raised his hand as though his point had been proven.

“And when these men’s village mount a search? Will they see _justice_ in this scene? Or will they see an outrage that demands revenge?”

Halsin opened his mouth but she pushed on, “Who suffers then? Not you or I but Thorn and his pack. At best, they will be driven off from their home. And at worst every one of them will be hunted down.”

“I didn’t--”

But her anger was still building. She threw her ax into the earth beside her. “It will not end there. Without any wolves in this territory, the deer will proliferate. They will strain the resources of the forest to its breaking point and many more will needlessly die. It will take a century for nature to right itself, all for a moment of satisfaction, of righteous anger.” 

She looked directly into his eyes. There was no remorse in them, though some doubt. “You’re a traitor to nature, not its defender. You are not one of us. I was wrong, to think I could teach you.”

Halsin’s hands became fists. He might well have broken and tried to hit her. But instead, he screamed a wordless howl of rage and despair that rang across the hillside, stilling the birdsong. 

Dalia turned her back on him, her failed pupil, and on the pathos of the young wolf mourning, and walked slowly, stiffly back down to the glade. 

She did not expect she would see him again in this life.

*

Time could mend any wound; Dalia had lived long enough to know the truth of that. 

She went about her days in rote, knowing through wisdom hard-won that she would once again appreciate the sun’s warmth on her skin, the taste of a wholesome meal, the sound of the stream’s unending flow. But even as she tried to take heart in the inevitability of healing, a small voice insisted that she had lost everything. Again. That life was little more than an exercise in losing all that mattered, concluding with her own mortal end.

Those thoughts mostly came in the dusky evenings when she sat alone at the hearth (she could not bear to sit at the table where they had shared their meals) and the fire died to back ashes for lack of motivation to rekindle its flames. 

If she had dreaded his coming to her door, begging her forgiveness, she need not have worried. For he did not come. 

But a moon after the killings, she returned from a walk deep into the forest where she’d helped a colony of bees find a new home--the most mundane tasks gave the most pleasure, these days--and found other visitors in her glade. 

Instead of striding over to greet them, she watched from behind the grandfather oak. They were five: all strong human men, well-armed. Though that didn’t necessarily mean trouble. The humans often went armed into the wood, fearful as they were of its denizens. Of nature’s power outstripping their own.

Her hut door was open and it was apparent they were waiting for someone inside. Heat rose in her at the thought of unseen hands rifling through her things. 

Against her better judgment, Dalia stepped out from behind the tree, drawing herself to her full height. 

“Why have you come to my glade? And why do you trespass in my abode?” She glared between them, doing her best to look intimidating but not an immediate threat. Their beards hid their faces and made them all look the same. Or perhaps they were related--all humans looked alike, to her, particularly the men.

“Two of our own went missing in this wood,” said the taller one with the grey beard. She pegged him as the leader; humans usually organized their social and political structures around seniority. 

“They’re not in my hut,” she said coolly. The men glanced between one another, doubtful. “I’ve not cooked them for breakfast if that is your worry.” 

“She has a witchy look about her,” said one of the younger, yellow-bearded ones, as though she were not present.

“I reckon she’s a hag in a fair disguise,” said another of the young men, looking her dead in the eye as he spoke. He made some gesture of religious protection.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. But she was already evaluating her combat options, weighing her chances. They were just looking for an excuse to attack, she could sense. But she had little chance against five of them--and more, perhaps, inside. They were skilled hunters with good weapons: spiked greatclubs, crossbows, a city-forged longsword.

The greybeard smiled a smile that didn’t reach his chilly blue eyes. Death was in them, and grievous violence. “Have you seen them, lass, or nay? We would like to know.”

Dalia struck first, for the slim advantage that surprise might grant her. Vines leapt from the earth to ensnare the two young hunters closest to her as she ducked behind a fallen tree for cover from the volley of arrows that followed.

They shouted to the men inside and her heart sank when three emerged from the hut. She would not survive a fight against eight, even with all her magic, even with the wood itself to aid her. 

But nor would she surrender. 

She took the shape of the wolf, fire burning in her marrow as her bones snapped and bent to the canine form. Her thoughts became simpler yet more exigent. The wolf mind was made for bloodshed.

Emboldened by their numbers, one of the young hunters was already sneaking around the edge of the fallen tree. She tore his throat away in a thrilling rip, the wolf relishing the sensation of hot blood gushing from the severed flesh in her mouth. Another she took with a swipe across the gut. A third managed to slash her hip with his sword before she downed him. And then an arrow caught her between the ribs and she collapsed into the grass, reverting to her elven form.

The pain was not so acute now and that was a mercy. But her horror--the horror born of a sentient imagination--was far worse as the remaining humans loomed over her. 

It was not difficult to imagine what was on their minds. Torture, rape, death. Perhaps in that order.

As they argued with each other over some triviality, she struggled to crawl away but the greybeard hunter stopped her with a kick to the arrow sticking out of her side. She cried out as pain radiated through her body, nearly stealing her consciousness away from her.

The greybeard’s hateful face loomed over her again. “Tell me,” it said. “Where are they, witch?”

So they had decided she was a witch. The druid took a shuddering breath that sent shards of icy pain through her chest.

“Dead,” she said. Her words were watery from the blood that had begun to fill her lungs. “Not by my hand.” The greybeard snorted; he didn’t believe her. 

“Where? I’ll give you a quick death.” His blue eyes looked earnest; so earnest, it could almost be true.

She told him about the bluebell hollow on the ridge, the sheltering briars. He nodded, satisfied. Then motioned to the other men. So it was to be rape first. 

Dalia closed her eyes, searching for any final measure of fortitude or magic. But she was drained of everything, even resolve. The sky seemed to be growing dimmer, though she knew it to be only midday. She was dying, she recognized distantly. Along with her sorrow and dread of what was to come, she felt something like relief.

Then the bear entered the glade. It was no bear she recognized, not Sage or one of his kin that ranged the unpeopled southern reaches. It was a great bear, though, and towering more still for its rage; it blotted out the sun when it stood on its hind legs and let out a roar of fury. It swiped the skin from the face of the man on her back, tearing him from neck to navel, showering her in the warmth of his blood. 

Weapons were useless against him. Gasping beneath the weighty corpse of the hunter, she watched as the bear gored and slashed his way through the remaining five hunters. The greybeard, last to die, foolishly begged the beast before succumbing to its snarling teeth, red-tipped as bloodied daggers. 

There was something familiar in the set of the bear’s shoulders and when it turned to her, she could see it in his eyes. 

“Halsin,” she said. Even speaking his name filled her body with relief. Peace.

The name summoned him back to himself. Her apprentice shifted back to his shape and ran over to her. “I can heal you,” he said, even though they both knew he couldn’t. 

“One day,” she said, grasping the foresight that came to her, unbidden. “You will be a great healer. But not yet.”

His features twisted in grief. “I’ve failed you again, then.”

“Never,” she sighed. She was powerless to resist the shuddering cough that sent a rictus of pain through her dying body. “Nature claims us all back, eventually. Today is my day. I am ready.”

Halsin bent over her and wept. He made her as comfortable as he could and settled her on his lap next to the stream so she could listen to it as she faded away, still looking up at his face as she departed the mortal realm for one of spirit and air.

*

Her amber eyes became sightless and Halsin closed them for the last time with the brush of his hand. He felt an emptiness that seemed to be shared by the whole wood, which had gone silent save for the senselessly burbling stream. 

He would bury her, in the coming days, beneath the grandfather oak that had so often sheltered them, to feed its roots with her blood and bone and magic. 

And when he arrived in the Circle at Dancing Falls, some months later, no one would question his haunted eyes, his quiet fury, his knowledge and skill in the ways of the druids. 

Halsin would be just another novice, albeit a precocious one who could already take a wild shape. A bear, whose rage returned with every transformation, bringing him back to the glade, to the locus of his greatest regret.


End file.
